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Arctic Homestead: The True Story of One Family's Survival and Courage in the Alaskan Wilds
by Norma Cobb, Charles W. Sasser, and Charles Sasser
Available from Amazon
$11.96
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Features
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin February 1, 2003
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312283792
ISBN-13: 978-0312283797
Product Dimensions:
8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Cobb holds a little-known but significant place in American history. As the last woman to claim land under the Homestead Act, in the 1970s, she was America's "last official woman pioneer." Using a direct, honest style that gives her writing an authentic frontier feel, Cobb, writing with Sasser (Fire Cops), relates the story of how she and her family of six "proved" their claim in northern Alaska. Over the course of the book, Cobb is transformed from a small-town girl into the driving force behind a courageous, isolated family braving the dangers of the Arctic wilderness. Through their ingenuity, determination and faith, the Cobbs endured the five years allotted by the government to improve their land, surviving harsh winters, bear and wolf attacks, money problems and degenerate neighbors who tried to kill them. Interspersed among stories about the hazards of living near the Arctic Circle are poignant family moments that reveal the affectionate side of these tough pioneers. In addition to Cobb, the reader meets many interesting characters, from the legendary Bushman (aka Bigfoot) to gun-slinging locals who would seem more at home a century earlier. Among them is Cobb's husband, Lester, of whom locals say, "If you had a choice between fighting an enraged Grizzly or taking on Lester Cobb, you might be safer choosing the bear." Cobb's voice combines the ruggedness of the frontier with the tenderness of a caring mother, resulting in an appealing, and enjoyably quick, read. 8-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Review
“Turn off the TV, throw a log on the fire, unpack your dreams. This is the real thing: a farewell account of our greatest myth about ourselves, the frontier myth. Norma Cobb writes with a skinning knife and gun stock, with bear grease and shards of river ice---a memoir as wild, engaging, stubborn, and authentic as that distant valley where her family staked out the last plot in America.” --John Balzar, author of Yukon Alone
“Cobb’s voice combines the ruggedness of the frontier with the tenderness of a caring mother, resulting in an appealing, and enjoyably quick read.” --Publishers Weekly
“Her story exhibits her strength and sheer willpower to make it work.” --Oregonian
-- Review
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Arctic Homestead: The True Story of One Family's Story of Survival and Courage in the Alaska Wilds (Hardcover)
Arctic Homestead is a simply written collection of short stories that chronicles the struggles of the Cobb family as they "prove up" their homestead. It is very light reading and should not take more than an afternoon to read through. While it will not go down as a great book, it does provide some entertaining reading. There are certainly better and more accurate books written about homesteading in the bush of Alaska, but this book does give the reader a sense of what interior Alaska was like in the mid to late 70's. Just take some of what you read with a healthy "grain of salt." This book is of particular interest to me because I lived with the Cobbs on their Lost Creek Ranch Homestead from June of 1978 to January of 1979. My name is Ken Nelson and my time with the Cobbs is erroneously summarized in Chapter 67. Norma mistakenly identifies this time as 1981. Norma Cobb, as comes through clearly in the book, tends to be quite a paranoid individual. She always fears the worst is going to happen in any situation and almost instinctively distrusts anyone outside of her family. You will notice as you read the book that she also tends to manipulate facts in her stories to place her family in the best possible light. Les is a driven man and is willing to bend the law and truth to fit his particular needs. While I always liked Les in spite of himself and generally admired Norma for her grit and determination to keep her family together in the wilderness, I was never fully able to accept that their way of getting ahead was right. Too many relationships were destroyed because of her paranoia and their willingness to destroy anyone and anything that might possibly threaten their way of life. My relationship with them was also mostly destroyed through this paranoia even though I wasn't driven off under gun point or blasted out with dynamite. Read the book for stories of people who were. Les and Norma had promised me the Oh Brother cabin and 5 acres of land with it if I would stay and help educate their children over the winter of 1978 and help Les with the work on the homestead. This I fully intended to do until circumstances made me decide it would be best for me to leave in January of 1979. Les had once again left the homestead looking for work. Norma had basically thrown him out and was threatening to divorce him. There is much more to this story than I care to disclose here to protect all of the parties involved in the situation. Never the less, shortly before I decided it was best that I leave, Norma had made the twins, Cora and Cara, move in with me in the Oh Brother cabin since they were Les's kids and not hers. I was only 21 at the time and did not feel fully prepared to take care of 5 year old twin girls in spite of the fact that they were very sweet and cooperative. Also, I had recently become engaged during the visit of my California girl friend, Donell, and was anxious to get back nearer to her. In the book, Norma comes across as a devoted and almost worshipful wife. While this was true much of the time, Les and Norma were not immune to the factors that strain marriages of blended families. Also, living as they were, there were even more stresses than usual to threaten their marriage. Les was often gone months at a time. I give Norma credit for sticking with Les even when she had legitimate reasons for breaking up their marriage. Les also had the presence of mind to keep things patched up between him and Norma because he knew that he would fail if she were to leave him. All of these problems were mostly ignored in the telling of this story even though you get hints of it every now and then. The biggest shock for me came when I read that I was credited with letting most of their dogs die while the Cobbs were gone. I had stayed alone on the homestead while they were gone in order to take care of their dogs. One dog, Arrow, had suddenly and unexpectedly refused to go any farther while in harness on a return trip from Rampart. I had taken him out of harness because the other dogs were just dragging him along. I expected him to follow us home but I never saw him again. He later turned up dead under a cabin in Rampart. This was very upsetting to me as Arrow was a very friendly dog that I had come to love. Dogs in the bush had no veterinary care and almost no vaccines. It was easy for canine diseases to pass from one team to another. Native dogs teams had spent the night with me on the homestead and I had staked out my dogs with teams in Rampart. Arrow must have contracted a deadly disease, but I'll never know for sure. All of the other dogs along with around 15 new pups that came while they were gone were still alive when I left. Arrow's death coupled with the necessity to clean up a large amount of dog feces that had been buried in the deep winter snow the next spring made her concoct a story that I must have neglected the dogs. While I freely admit that there were days when I did not get every "pile" chiseled cleanly out of the snow and days when heavy snowfall prevented me from shoveling at all, the dogs were fed and watered regularly and were in good condition upon their return. After their first winter in the bush Norma describes a day of cleaning up after the dogs during breakup that sounds very similar to what it must have been like in the spring of 1979. Also contrary to Norma's description in Chapter 67, Sid and I parted on very good terms. In fact, the night before I left, Sid came down to my cabin and begged me to stay. Both of us were in tears before that night was over. Sid certainly was forced to grow up before his time but he was up to the task. His dog team was never close to Iditarod caliber, but he was good with the dogs. It was Les that did not have the temperament for dog training and the family sled dogs all died from lead poisoning from Les's 44 some time after I left. This I learned from Les himself when I visited the homestead in April of 1979 and found all my dogs and most of their dogs missing.
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Arctic Homestead: The True Story of One Family's Survival and Courage in the Alaskan Wilds
by Norma Cobb, Charles W. Sasser, and Charles Sasser
Available from Amazon
$11.96
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|
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